Dorothy Kilgallen was the daughter of James Kilgallen, a colorful and popular newspaperman. She followed her father into the newspaper business and made her early reputation as a crime reporter (a novelty for women in those days) and for her participation in an around-the-world race. Although she came in second, her fame (she was the only woman in the race) and her subsequent book about the race, "Girl Around the World", established her as a presence in the newspaper world (the book was the basis of the movie Fly Away Baby (1937)). She become a powerful and influential Broadway columnist, and with husband Richard Kollmar hosted a long-running morning radio chat show, "Breakfast With Dick and Dorothy." Her private life was less successful, however, and included a disastrous affair with singer Johnnie Ray and problems with substance abuse, mainly alcohol. Nevertheless, all of America came to know and admire her through the TV quiz show "What`s My Line?" (1950). She took the game more seriously than her more light-hearted colleagues did, however, and it always bothered her that she was never as popular with the show`s viewers as her fellow panelists were.

Kilgallen wasn`t just a "gossip" columnist, however; her reporting about accused wife-killer Dr. Sam Sheppard (his case was the basis for the TV series "The Fugitive" (1963)) was crucial in securing a new trial for him. She was also a vocal critic of the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and she secured an exclusive interview with Jack Ruby, the killer of alleged presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Kilgallen claimed to have important new information on the murder of JFK, but her discoveries, if any, will never be known -- she died under mysterious circumstances (suicide or an accidental overdose according to some, murder according to others) soon after the announcement and the notebooks containing the information she was about to publish disappeared. They were never seen again.